Tragic villainess Katie Briers
Katie Briers (Kirsty Mitchell) is a tragic villainess from "Magic Majestic," the antepenultimate episode of New Tricks' fifth season (airdate 11 August 2008).
Katie's backstory revealed that in 1998, she appeared as a contestant on Billy Carse's TV show, Magic Majestic. She was one of four random contestants who were hypnotized and placed into what resembled a war games-type scenario, as part of Carse's experiments in illusion. Following her participation on the show, however, Katie shockingly turned heel by stabbing her husband of three weeks, Raymond Briers, to death with a knife, with the trial proceedings following the murder revealing that Katie was still under hypnosis at the time of her murderous actions. Katie was acquitted in March 2000, though she continued to face suspicion and backlash in the time that passed.
Katie phoned Brian Lane about her case in the episode's events, and it led to it being UCOS' main case. Regarding Billy Carse's status as a suspect, Brian revealed that he passed away on December 26, 2007, and while Brandon Skye (Carse's rival) and Lulu Questel (the show's producer and Skye's lover) were each suspected, the episode's climax revealed that Billy's own brother, Guy Carse, was the mastermind. Though Guy claimed to have loved his brother, he became jealous of him after Lulu entered his life and planned to ruin him. Katie was brought out of her hypnotic trance after the show, which originally led the group to believe that Katie killed her husband willingly. However, as it turned out, Guy hypnotized Katie a second time, and caused her to kill Raymond, with the reveal coming while Guy was driving with Katie and Brian.